[22 ParadiseHale, Emilyspends Easter in Harwichport;m9 Rd., Northampton; forwarded to The Snow Inn, Harwichport]
I had, I thought, put aside Saturday morning to write to you, forgetting that I was on duty at the office that morning (it comes round about once in two months); lunchedDobrées, the;b2 withDobrée, Bonamytraining gunner officers;c2 Bonamy and Valentine who had a few days leave – he looks very well after six months of training young gunner officers in the open air, but very bored by this repeated activity. Your two letters 28 and 29 arrived within a few days of each other – I can’t say just when the latter came, as it was waiting for me on Tuesday, and many have been there all through the Easter holidays (weather cold and dull again). So it would seem that air mail does come by air, part of the way. TheHale, Emilywritings;x4'The Personal Equation in Spoken English';b4 typed copy (professionally typed, I suspect) of your address arrived on Friday.1 It reads very well indeed. The opening is effective, only it gave one the impression at first that only twelve girls enrolled altogether – I found out later that this was one section only of a lot of 300 or so, which is an impressive figure. I protest always against the word ‘normalcy’ but perhaps the typist did that. What is particularly effective is the way in which you give (I presume to an audience which had never thought about it before) the conviction that good speech (in every sense) is not at all merely an added grace, like learning to curtsey, but has a total importance for the person who acquires it, and has something to do with both physical and spiritual well-being, and develops the personality and consciousness. Elsewhere you have said something about not trying to iron out all local differences or impose a standardised or BBC utterance, which I remember as very interesting. But you were limited by time – and as I suppose most of these graduates had had no such teaching, and perhaps many of them suffer from the lack of it, there were probably some things better left unsaid! Anyway, it seems to me first-rate, for the occasion and for the choice of what could be said in the time.
SpeechSansom, Robertknown to EH;a2 reminds me of Robert Sansom. Of course: I never connected him with the Sansom you had in the summer. Curious. He speaks very well, and I think is quite an intelligent actor.
I am glad to get the first news of your Easter vacation plans. There are, of course, very few of one’s friends with whom one would wish to go away for a week or more; and of those, it may easily be that none are available, when one’s freedom is fixed to certain dates. (I hope that the summer will provide better for you). To go away alone is very much a second best for you, since what you need is change to a different kind of company; but it is better than some alternatives in giving at least the hope of healthful rest; so I hope to hear that Harwichport has done you good. Itravels, trips and plansTSE's 1936 American trip;c4TSE reflects on;b6 don’t remember just where it is, since my only acquaintance with the Cape is the week we had with the Ellsmiths!
ICollege of the City of New Yorkoffers TSE wartime lecturing;a1 havetravels, trips and planspossible wartime transatlantic crossings;d7and TSE's New York proposition;a5 had another tentative enquiry, from the College of the City of New York.2 IAmericaNew York (N.Y.C.);g1prospect of visiting appals TSE;a4 don’t know what sort of a place that is, and the idea of spending several months in New York City is rather appalling. They have not mentioned the sum they could pay, so I must wait and see. IRussell, Bertrandhis decline traced;a8 should not much fancy the prospect of reviving Bertie Russell’s acquaintance: that belongs to a chapter of the past which I should prefer not to open again. You can hardly say more now, than that he’s not certifiable. The Russells may be odd sometimes, but the Stanleys of Alderley, his mother’s family, are much odder. When he was younger he had considerable charm, and occasional flashes of intuition; he began to write bad prose about the beginning of the last war, but there must have been some deterioration before that. I wish that before making plans, I could be able to peep into the future dimly and get a general notion of what next winter is going to be like: if it is to be just like this one I should prefer to be in America, but if there is to be any hot stuff here it might be agony to be away for any length of time.
I don’t intend to write at length on Educational matters unless there should appear to be some modest ‘call’ to do so, I assure you! I will agree at least that when I go outside my literary field it ought only to be under the pressure of some real public need, and not in mere dissipation [sic]. IBoutwood Lectures (afterwards The Idea of a Christian Society)apparently stimulating to others;b6Idea of a Christian Society, The
IKoussevitzky, Serge;a1 was interested in what you wrote of Koussevitsky 3 andKrauss, Sophie M.;a6 of Sophie Krauss, and grieve to hear your news of Alice Gilman, though of course I have never met her. PerhapsEnglandChipping Campden, Gloucestershire;e1without EH;b1 I shall go to Campden after all, when the summer comes. Going-away issues cannot arise for me now, until I have got back from Italy.
1.‘The Personal Equation in Spoken English’, Smith Alumnae Bulletin, May 1940, 249–50: a paper read to the Smith College Alumnae Council (conference), 17 Feb. 1940: see Appendix.
2.A. D. Compton, Chairman of the Department of English, College of the City of New York – the oldest free public institution of higher education in the USA (its campus was situated in Manhattan, overlooking Harlem), and with a reputation for political radicalism – invited TSE to come to New York City and give a course in the fall or spring semester 1940–1.
3.Serge KoussevitzkyKoussevitzky, Serge (1874–1951), Russian-born conductor, composer and double-bassist; musical director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1924–49.
3.Bonamy DobréeDobrée, Bonamy (1891–1974), scholar and editor: see Biographical Register.
3.Serge KoussevitzkyKoussevitzky, Serge (1874–1951), Russian-born conductor, composer and double-bassist; musical director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1924–49.
1.SophieKrauss, Sophie M. M. Krauss (b. 1891), wife of Arthur Jeffrey Krauss (1884–1947), Episcopalian, who had resided in Seattle since 1921. Arthur Krauss ran the Krauss Brothers Lumber Company and was to retire in 1938 when the business was wound up in the area. They lived at 128 40th Avenue N., Seattle, with Lillie Cook (49) and Lucy Williams (28) – presumably their servants. See too Lyndall Gordon, The Hyacinth Girl, 183.
2.RobertSansom, Robert Sansom (1903–79), actor; subsequently best known for film and TV work.